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History

A starry sky over a mountain landscape

Photo by neida zarate on Unsplash

Aimé Césaire: Thinking through Resonance, Thinking Outside of History

By Jason Allen-Paisant

Aimé Césaire is essential to the way I understand myself and my work in the world.

Emiliano Zapata on horseback, scene from the Mexican Revolution

"Emiliano Zapata on horseback, scene from the Mexican Revolution," José Guadalupe Posada (Mexican, 1851–1913), ca. 1911. Public domain. Gift of Jean Charlot, 1930.

Unspeakable Fermentations: Putrefaction and Social Revolt in Paris and Mexico City

By Diego Rodríguez Landeros

With canine relish and human shame, I’d rather sniff than taste.

Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers

A loom with Mapuche textiles

Marco Antonio Correa Flores, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Following Luminous Traces

By Daniela Catrileo

Daniela Catrileo reaffirms the existence of Mapuche literature—historically considered static or even nonexistent—as a vital, diverse, and growing body of work.

Translated from Spanish by Edith Adams

Multilingual

An old ornate mansion in India with a green wrought iron gate

Photo by Vikram Nath Chouhan 🇮🇳 on Unsplash

Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 2

By Geetanjali Shree

The city murmured in the mazes of her ancient face.

Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Two blue glass skyscrapers seen from below against a cloudy blue sky

Photo by Shubham Sharma on Unsplash

Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 1

By Geetanjali Shree

Here, all things old have been suppressed.

Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Tree of life carving at the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque

Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ahmedabad

By Bharat Trivedi

Those days of leaping carefree into the Sabarmati / Are long gone

Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai

Transcending the Human Viewpoint

By Madeleine Feeny

I allowed myself to be very playful and unafraid, and to try everything.

The Voices of Contact Languages in Asia: An Introduction

By Stefanie Shamila Pillai

For multilingual writers, choosing to write in their heritage languages can be seen as an expression of agency, an active choice to communicate in a nondominant language.

The Forsaken

Listen, all of you, to what will later be said of the Forsaken by one of their descendants.

Translated from French by Edward Gauvin

Adabai

Their nayffara is a flutelike instrument heavy with history, deeply immersed in sorrow.

Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain

You Will Tell Them

By Mariem Mint Derwich

You will say to them that she sleeps in the calabash of worlds

Translated from French by Emma Ramadan

Multilingual

Barzakh

By Moussa Ould Ebnou

What you are witnessing is the last face of the Earth.

Translated from Arabic by July Blalack

Writing Against Estrangement in Galicia

By Scott Shanahan

No doubt a few Galicians will think it in very bad taste to inaugurate this issue with a likeness to their higher profile southern neighbors, but because there may be a great many glad for the comparison,…

And They Say

By Susana Sanches Arins

i come from a family built on longing.

Translated from Galician by Kathleen March

Destined from Birth

By Xenia Emelyanova

Enough of their butchery.

Translated from Russian by Katherine E. Young

Multilingual

Aperture: Sudanese Female Novelists Coming into Focus

By Sawad Hussain

Is there some sort of double marginalization at play?

The Birth of the Spirit

By Sara Al-Jack

I didn’t go to the dorms as I had planned; my feet led me to the river.

Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Zohdi

Islands Running across the Globe

By Manuel Brito-Semedo

Right from the start, Cabo Verdean concepts of identity and individuality were defined by this mixed reality: the African and the European, in all their diverse and contrasting characteristics.

Translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar

Cabo Verde Is the Center of the World

By Germano Almeida

In those days the island of Boa Vista was the whole world.

Translated from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan

Black Saturday

By Djamila Morani

Soothsayers tell the truth even when they’re lying.

Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain

Six Proposals for Participation in a Conversation about Bread

“That’s what we get for supporting Communism: standing in line for this black loaf.”

Translated from Arabic by Alice Guthrie

Writing Against the Grain

By Alice Guthrie

The writers here are pushing the boundary of the known and working against the grain of the status quo.

Books hanging on light fixtures

Photo by Hatice Yardım on Unsplash

Invisible Crises

By Georgi Gospodinov

We must admit here that we, people on the side of literature, writers, publishers, and enthusiastic readers, have to a certain extent accepted our own defeat.

Translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel

The Abolition of the Profession of Curser

By Ismail Kadare

Other rumors might have circulated widely in earlier periods, but without a doubt these new ones should have produced the greatest effect.

Translated from French by John K. Cox

From “The Banquet in Blitva”

By Miroslav Krleza

Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza portrays a distinctly Balkan Everywhere of blended places and events in this surreal novel excerpt.

Translated from Croatian by Edward Dennis Goy & Jasna Levinger

Encountering North Korean Fiction: The Origins of the Future

By Stephen Epstein

Perhaps the most salient feature of North Korean literature in contrast to its southern counterpart is its eternal optimism.